Junk Food Review: Pac-Man 30th Anniversary Bun by Circle K Sunkus

(This article was originally posted in Japanese at 15:00 Jan. 13, 2010)

Pac-Man was first released in Japan in 1980, so 2010 is its 30th anniversary year. Naturally, there are many special events and releases in store. To kick off the anniversary year, Pac-Man-shaped steamed bun "Pac man" (man stands for mantou and variants of Chinese baozi are called with the suffix -man in Japan) was released today by convenience store chain Circle K Sunkus.

Chuka man are regular feature at convenience stores in Japan during winter. They're kept warm near the counter and will be handed paper-wrapped to go.

120 yen (about $1.3) each. They weren't exactly identical, some got their mouth wide open while others looked to be in the middle of chewing.

With Pac-Man logo. Cute.

Custard filling with almond crunch cookie (the brown part). The cookie absorbed moisture and tasted a bit doughy. Not exactly a gourmet treat, but you can tell at least they tried (maybe too hard).

The sheet on the bottom has Pac-Man trivia. There are four trivias in all but we only got two.

Fact 1: The little dots Pac-Man was eating were cookies.

Fact 2: Pac-Man's shape was inspired by pizza.

The yellow part of the dough looked pumpkin-ish but we couldn't tell the difference from the white part. Maybe they could have made it a Pizza-man (a fairly popular variant of Chinese bun with tomato sauce and cheese fillings).